Come Back to What You Know

Thursday 18 December 2008
Verkala – Thiruvananthapuram – Bombay – Abu Dhabi – London

So I have about four hours to kill in Abu Dhabi. It's not the best place to spend time. It's too small, there's no wifi, all the food and drink is really expensive. There are annoying tannoys every five seconds announcing some flight or another.

Anyway I fill my time by completing my blog and then generally wondering around, having a look in the electronic shops. After a while it's time to board although one bright spark decides to arrange for two flights to leave within 30 minutes of each other from the same gate, er, pod thing (you have to go there to see it) which means massive queues at the security check. Despite this I manage to board the plane and I have a nice window seat at the back on the right, with a good view. Sweet.

There's a guy sitting next to me who's a student who's just been in Chennai. He's reading Maths at Oxford and reading The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Despite being and looking clearly like an uber-geek he's actually very personable and easy to chat to which is a relief.

I watch a few things on TV and then have a snooze. I think I fell asleep over Kuwait and wake up over western Turkey so it was probably a few hours or so. We head towards Heathrow from the east. The weather is a bit cloudy and it's still dark outside as the local time is about 6. After the obligitory half an hour in the holding stack somewhere over southern Essex we make our way across London to the west.

Compared to the less wealthy countries I've been travelling to recently, London looks huge and opulent beyond belief. The street and building lights look like some scintillating computerised display, and the light cloud cover makes it look like steam or smoke is rising off the land, like there's too much energy to be contained.

It's always a magical sight and is made all the better when the cloud parts to be completely clear and dead in the centre is Hammersmith, Charing Cross Hospital and the very house in which I live in.

We arrive.

Collecting my bags and making my way into town on the tube again, it's great to be back. That's not that I didn't enjoy being away, but there is something comforting about being home again. The darkness and the drudgery of the tube always appears exciting when you haven't been on it for weeks. It's funny to look at the people's faces all drained of energy and happiness, wondering what their lives must be like, knowing full well that I was one once and will be once again.

Three months away, four countries visited, though India of course is like 30 different countries squeezed together and trying to competitively negotiate some way of working together and against each other at the same time. I've come back tanned and relaxed, with more stories than Scheherazade (well, almost). Perhaps the main benefit has been to have a break, just go and do something completely different, see new things, meet new people. I guess looking back on previous trips it puts it all into perspective – everything's OK. Even the hardest moments – not knowing when to get off the train to Surat Thani, the fight in Jaipur, the train to Bombay, driving mopeds in Arambol – they weren't that stressful, or bad. In fact they were quite fun.

The best bit really has to be Bangkok, Goa and the ashram. Bangkok was a fun city to go out in, and remarkably it was perhaps the only city on the whole trip that had bars where you could meet people and that were open late. If I had spent more time going out there I would have torn it up.

Goa was just fantastic as life was reduced to eating, sleeping, sunbathing, swimming, relaxing, drinking and going to an excuse of a bar. The exercise I did made me feel really healthy and put me in fantastic shape. And then to follow that with the yoga and meditation in the ashram really made me feel relaxed and content.

It always helped to meet some cool people along the way, of all shapes and sizes. Hung from Vietnam, Steve, Mike and Michelle from Ozland, the bar owner in Seam Reap and the waiter in the Dead Fish Tower, the nightclubbers of Bangkok, Amanda and Jonny the Scottish couple, the Burmese chap in the bar, the Welsh guys, John and Mark in Delhi, the Flemmish couple in the desert, Megan on the train and of course, Tim, Pat and last but not least Evan. Pete, and of course the good doctor get a special mention, but I've met them before!

But perhaps what I appreciated most about this holiday is the simple life of travelling, with little or no concern, and the ability to have some time to myself on occasion, to contemplate the nature of life and experience, and to try to achieve a wider perspective on the human condition. I know I've had a glimpse of that, and the challenge will be to maintain that on a day to day basis, once I have reintegrated myself with the routine, day-to-day working world.

That, and the challenge that will be facing us all over the next two years, as we leave the dream of the great moderation behind us, to enter the dream of the second great recession. Really, all we have is now.